In the past weeks, we have learned who the main players (Top 20 patent owners) are, in terms of portfolio size, among firms developing e-Mobility technologies. We further ranked this group of innovators based on the size of their portfolios, number of active patents in their portfolio and also according to the legal status of active patents owned. What we haven’t looked at so far, is a comparison of these companies on the basis of the quality of their portfolios.
Therefore, in this edition of #eMobility updates, we rank the firms that are developing e-Mobility technologies, based on portfolio strength as measured by their portfolio’s Patent Asset Index™.
What is the Patent Asset Index™?
Patent Asset Index™, our proprietary and patented patent quality metric, is used to evaluate overall portfolio strength or quality. A portfolio’s Patent Asset Index™ is calculated by using two other proprietary metrics Technology Relevance™ and Market Coverage™ – each respectively measuring the quality of the technology protected by the patent and the overall size of the global markets protected by the patent. These two indicators are combined to arrive at a measure we named Competitive Impact™ of a patent which measures the average quality of the patent. Patent Asset Index™ is simply a summation of the Competitive Impact™ of all the patents in a portfolio and indicates the overall strength of the portfolio in comparison to other portfolios. For a more comprehensive and detailed explanation of the concepts of Patent Asset Index, Technology Relevance, Market Coverage and Competitive Impact and to learn how these metrics are adjusted for uniformity and accuracy, please click here.
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Click here to watch our recent webinar on
the technology field of 'e-Mobility'
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e-Mobility developers ranked according to Patent Asset Index™
On the chart ranking companies based on their portfolio Patent Asset Index, the top position is still held by Toyota Motor which maybe mostly explained by the large portfolio of patents that they own in this technology. Since the Patent Asset Index, of a portfolio, is the sum of all the Competitive Impact of patents within the portfolio, a considerably large portfolio can result in a correspondingly large Patent Asset Index.
Shifting focus from the top spot, almost every single company has had a change of position on the ranking chart as compared to their earlier portfolio size-based rankings. For e.g. Ford who was ranked at 6th according to portfolio size, jumped to the 2nd place, when considering the quality of patents it owns, in e-Mobility technologies, as compared to the other players in this field.
Similarly, some companies like WiTricity and BYD Company did not even register a presence on the Top 20 list of patent owners, when ranked according to portfolio size, in this technology. They appear only on the Patent Asset Index ranking. WiTricity is ranked at 11 and BYD Company at 16 on this new list of companies, ranked according to the quality of their patent portfolio, protecting e-Mobility technologies. For a company developing technologies and products in this space, a simple look at all the players and their portfolio size would be wildly insufficient. Since such a narrow view of the technology field, would leave them vulnerable to other strong players in the field like WiTricity & BYD. Within the PatentSight software, if you click on the name of a company, you can perform a deep dive into the portfolios of these companies directly from this chart. Here you can instantly review the patents that they own in this technology.
Other major uses of the Patent Asset Index™
Apart from benchmarking your competition, the Patent Asset Index is also helpful when identifying new players in a technology, who may own relatively smaller portfolios which have high Patent Asset Index values. These could, for example, be your new acquisition targets. Being an established player in any market, your firm could benefit from such insights as the kind of technologies contained within these strong portfolios owned by smaller startup type companies. If the technology behind these patents can bridge the gap between your current R&D and the technology required for a competitive market offering, then this set of patents would definitely add value to your existing portfolio. Take your company from the sidelines to the center of the game, using a host of such similar analyses, which were specifically designed to empower you with actionable intelligence.
There are numerous other use-cases for the Patent Asset Index, ranging from Portfolio Management to R&D Benchmarking and even cost control. You can find more on these topics from the drop-down menu at the top of the page. If you like to read another use-case of the Patent Asset Index please click here.
Follow our LinkedIn page and subscribe to our 'PatentSight Automotive Updates' to make sure you don’t miss out on our upcoming analysis, in this series, which discusses the Top 20 patent owners in the field of e-Mobility with respect to the historical trend displayed by the Patent Asset Index™of their portfolios.
Interested in a "deeper dive"? Simply click on the button below, to order a personalized free demonstration.
See all the posts in this series
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Click here to watch our webinar on the evolution of the automotive industry with respect to latest technological developments
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